


flour water salt yeast (and rosemary)

by impossibletruths



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Baking, Baking Is A Love Language, Declarations Of Love, Healing, I Can't Believe Self Care Isn't An AO3 Tag, M/M, Overzealous Use Of Metaphor, Post-Season/Series 04, Recovery, Self-Reflection, self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 07:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: After they release him from the hospital, he bakes bread.





	flour water salt yeast (and rosemary)

> i. bread

After they release him from the hospital, he bakes bread.

Nothing complicated. No special ingredients, no overnight proving, nothing remotely flashy. Just flour water salt and a cheap packet of yeast from the bodega on the corner; it came in a pack of three and took two tries to cut it apart but he managed in the end. He mixes it with his hands, imperfect, fingers too clumsy for the spatula and pride too prickling for the mixer. It feels good, though, to dig into the sticky mix, work it all together until it coheres, makes something more than its parts. The excess dough catches up between his fingers and under his blunt nails, overwet, and dries against his wrists, crackling and strange and nice for the mundanity of the mess.

He sits while he works. His legs won’t hold his weight for long, aching and worn down at the hips knees ankles, but he makes himself alright with the sitting, cross-legged on the table with the bowl held steady in the crook of his knees, curling his fingers through the sticky mess until it isn’t quite so sticky, until it holds its shape, until he can set a timer and let it rest, dish towel thrown across the top of the bowl. He scrubs his hands over the trash can, watching the narrow spirals of dough peel away, leaving his skin a little gritty and a little raw beneath. 

He washes his hands after. The water is either too hot or too cold, but he comes away clean.

Correction: the bread is flour water salt yeast, and also rosemary. He doesn’t mean it to be when he starts, but after he has set the timer and before it has run its course he steps out onto the balcony, a little bored and a little cold in the impersonal penthouse, with the intent to sun himself, maybe. He finds instead a wide spread of potted plants, thyme and lavender and basil and cilantro and chives and dill and sage and lemongrass and and and.

And rosemary.

He spares a thought and a moment to text Josh, because experience has taught him wariness when it comes to Josh’s herbs, mundane or magical, and he would rather be sure he will get what he isn’t paying for. So he sends off a text––

(_it’s just rosemary man, _ comes the reply. Then, _ hey r u cooking? _

Eliot doesn’t answer.)

––and spends the rest of the prove stripping leaves. It takes a long while, joints stiff and fingers fumbling around the delicate task, but he sets to it with a single-minded stubbornness, and when the timer rings he has a neat pile of rosemary to show for his effort. He sits at the table with the dough and kneads it in meticulously, steady rhythm of _ pull fold turn _. An easy knead for an easy bread. Good, it’s all good: the sensation of cool dough against his palms and the soft-sharp smell of flour and fresh rosemary and the effort of his body, hands and wrists and elbows doing what he wants them to do, moving under his control. His skin fits him. It’s good.

When he’s finished, he can hold the dough in both hands, surprisingly hefty despite its size. Inside it’s still expanding; it sits in the shallow bowl of his palms and grows minute by minute, inch by inch. If he sits here long enough will he see it change, or is it more gradual than all that; will he have to blink, look away and back again to see how far it’s come?

He sets it back on the tabletop, flour-caked now; he will have to scrub it later, and the thought of the task overwhelms him for a moment, but–– later. He will have time for that. Right now he is busy with this, the dough, the making.

He dusts a baking sheet, sets his heavy little mound of flour and water and salt and yeast and rosemary in the center and covers it again. The dish towel is checkered cream and red; like everything else in this apartment it looks as though someone bought it for the idea of what a dish towel ought to be without the thought of putting it to use. But there’s flour on it now, dried dough caked to one edge. It’s messy, imperfect. Real.

Eliot sets a timer and sits on the balcony again. The warmth eases the ache of his knees shoulders back, all the parts of him that go stiff and clumsy and sore at the slightest provocation, or no provocation at all. He does the wrist stretches Lipson showed him, sets his hands palms up on his knees and turns his face towards the sun.

He doesn’t realize he’s dozed until the alarm rings. Then it’s back to the kitchen, oven preheating, dough twice the size. He scores it as steadily as he can, waits for the oven to chime. Water for the crust, extra dusting of flour, olive oil because that’s how someone did it, once, when he was young and learning, and it stuck. Into the oven, timer set, waiting.

Waiting.

The sun tilts westwards, skyscrapers throwing thick shadows across city blocks. The sky goes gold, then orange, then the bruised yellow-green of a smoggy evening sky. The house smells thick and heavy and heady with baking bread, sugars and starches transforming in the shelter of the oven. Eliot lingers in the kitchen, watches the timer tick down. Sets himself to the aching task of cleaning the table, and afterwards rubs at his neck until it makes his shoulder ache. A tight knot of hunger blooms in his belly, fed by the smell of baking bread. Has he eaten yet today? Well, he’ll eat soon enough.

He doesn’t mind the waiting so much now, with the world real around him. Not like he had then, caught up in a dream half his design. All the unpleasantness, the imperfection, the discomfort; it remind him he’s himself, mostly. Becoming himself, at least, more and more each day. Minute by minute, inch by inch.

The loaf comes out of the oven golden and piping hot, and he spends a clumsy moment with a pair of oven mitts trying to move it onto the cooling rack. His mouth waters. Somewhere in the endless expanse of the penthouse there’s movement, the distant sound of a door closing, footsteps. The bread crackles as it cools.

“Hey,” says Quentin, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His too-short hair is tousled, his shirt rumpled and days old. It hangs off him awkwardly. The air is thick with the smell of fresh bread and a million things unsaid. He yawns. “Did you make that?”

Eliot says, “Yeah.”

Quentin considers that, considers the halfway cleaned kitchen and the dishes soaking in the sink and the steaming loaf sitting on the cooling rack, slightly oblong, imperfect and made with his own hands.

A fission of pride warms his chest.

Quentin says, “Can I have some?”

_ Of course,_ thinks Eliot, and he thinks, _ Anything, always,_ and he thinks, _ Please._

“I think there’s jam in the fridge,” he says.

So Eliot fishes out butter and jam while Quentin’s steadier hands help with cutting thick slices before the bread has time to cool. Neither much minds the temperature, busy watching the butter melt, enjoying the crackling of the crust and the richness of the rosemary and the three part harmony of soft bread and salty butter and sweet jam.

A meal made by hand. Proof, maybe, slightly, that Eliot’s broken body is not so broken that it cannot make good things, warm and fresh things, things to feed and fill others. Proof that maybe, with time, it can be good again.

“I think I’ll make cookies next,” he says when they have devoured nearly half the loaf. He says it more to test how it feels than anything, but once the words are out he finds they’re true, or true enough. Quentin sucks a smear of jam off the meat of his thumb, attention fixed on the crumbs across the counter. Eliot watches him out of the corner of one eye. The apartment smells of rosemary.

“That sounds nice,” Quentin says. Then, quieter, “This was really good.”

“Thank you.”

They sit side by side, not touching but there, together. Alive. Imperfect and messy and fed and full and growing, changing. Healing, just a little.

Eliot thinks, _ I am going to make cookies. _

It’s a good thought.

* * *

> ii. cake

Eliot does not make cookies. When he sits down with all his ingredients––flour and baking soda and two kinds of sugar, eggs and vanilla and and and––his hands shake so badly he can’t measure them out, and when Margo tries to offer her assistance he snaps at her, furious and helpless and as hair’s breadth from tears or panic or both. He spends the afternoon in the room designated his, trying desperately to muffle his rage, unable to put up even the simplest silencing charm because his fucking _ hands don’t work. _

When he can stand to be seen again, bear stepping out of the privacy of his ruin of a room without feeling the need to peel all his skin off, he takes the longest, hottest shower he can manage, sitting with his knees drawn up in the narrow tub and letting the hissing spray swallow his misery.

Someone, in that time, fixes the clock he shattered, crunched between layers of duvet and pillow with blind glee. His bedding remains strewn across the floor, meager wardrobe wrinkling in piles, single chair tipped over, pill bottles scattered, but. The small, fragile thing has been set to rights on the bare nightstand. He stands in his rage-tossed room, towel tight around his hips and leaning on the godforsaken cane, and the lingering dregs of anger spiral away from him like water down a drain. He dresses slowly and awkwardly, painfully straightens up what he can of his room: chair set upright, bedding piled on the bed, clothes put away as best he can manage, pill bottles back in their rightful place.

He apologizes to Margo, which she accepts with a low hum and a barbed comment about letting people help that carries no sting. For dinner they order pizza, him and Margo and Kady and Josh and Quentin. It isn’t the strangest grouping to reside at the apartment, but things are as awkward as they are familiar, and nobody but Josh sticks around long. Afterwards Eliot gives up on remaking his bed, spreads the duvet out on the bare mattress and stares at the ceiling, willing sleep to come.

It is hours before he gives up and takes himself and his cane out into the living room, exhausted and sleepless.

He’s not, of course, the only insomniac in this household.

“Hi,” says Quentin when Eliot appears. The bluish screen of his laptop emphasizes the bags under his eyes, the drawn line of his mouth, the gauntness of his face. Has he been eating? Sleeping?

“Hi,” he returns, edge of a question beneath it.

“Julia called,” he says by way of explanation. Research, then. Eliot hums and considers sinking down onto the couch, but if he does he will never get up again, and he is itchy from a day of tight-wound irritation in spite of the exhaustion crowding in beneath. He browses the kitchen cabinets, poking through the strange mix of microwavables and snack foods and constituent parts of larger meals purchased on an idealistic whim that will never see the light of day. Near the back he finds a box of cake mix.

According to the clock blinking above the stove it’s still today, and he refuses to be bested.

He takes his time, hands stiff, manages opening the mix and melting the butter and pouring the milk, because fuck that oil and water shit. It’s the eggs that give him trouble. He breaks two in quick succession, and for a moment his vision blurs and he has to close his burning eyes, swallow around the lump in his throat, hold tight to the lip of the counter and tell himself it doesn’t _ matter _ that much, God, it’s fine. He breathes.

“Quentin?” he says softly, and when the soft tap of fingers on keys in the other room doesn’t let up he tries more loudly, “Q?”

The typing stops. A moment later, Quentin’s head rises from behind the couch.

“Yeah?”

It takes him a moment to unlock his jaw. “Can you help me with this?”

Quentin stands fully, eyes making a slow sweep of the dimly lit kitchen: Eliot standing over a mixing bowl, measuring cups stacked next to the unplugged mixer, egg carton open, cracked shells and dripping yolk pooling yellow on the granite countertop. His eyes flick up to meet Eliot’s.

“Sure,” he says gently, which makes it worse, a little. “Yeah.”

He maneuvers around the sectional while Eliot sops up shattered egg with a paper towel, methodical. Quentin lurks quietly at the edge of the counter, hands tucked deep in his pockets, a quieter, more muted sort of hovering than Eliot remembers. Or, does it count as memory when it’s a papercut imitation you’ve conjured for yourself? He chases the thought away.

“It’s four eggs,” Eliot tells him. “I can’t––” And then comes the choking again, and he swallows it all down.

“Okay,” says Quentin quietly, and he pulls his hands free, cracks eggs against the rim of the bowl one after the other. His shoulders are tight and eyes bruised and hands steady. Afterwards he hesitates. “Can I–– Is there anything else you need?”

Where to begin, thinks Eliot with a black smile, and when Quentin’s eyes flick sideways to him there’s a matching wryness.

But. One step at a time.

“A cake pan,” he says. “Two, if you can find them.” He can’t go fishing through the cabinet with the dangerous stacks of pots and pans because his knees are… not very much into the idea of being knees. The wryness across Quentin’s face fades away.

“Okay,” he says again, and Eliot plugs in the mixer as Quentin goes digging through the cookware and emerges with a pair of round cake pans, stickers still stuck to the bottoms.

“Jesus,” says Q, holding one up to the light. “Who pays this much for kitchenware?”

“I can’t imagine Marina paid for any of this,” Eliot returns, and flicks the mixer on. It whirs for a moment, grindingly loud in the quiet of the night, and then Quentin’s fingers flex and twist and it goes silent, turning smoothly. Eliot presses his lips together, swallows back a heavy, tired envy.

“Thanks,” he mutters. Quentin, picking the stickers off the pans, doesn’t look at him.

“Sure.”

They work in silence, Q’s back to him as he washes and rinses and dries the pans unprompted, greases and flours them when Eliot asks. It’s familiar in a dreamlike way, unlived memories a projection over the moment, all light and distance. Eliot beats the batter and feels the world drift around him, body present and impossibly far away at the same time. He adjusts his grip on the mixer.

After the cakes are in the oven, Quentin sets the timer on the microwave, red numbers blinking down the minutes. Eliot installs himself at the counter, joined a moment later by Quentin with his laptop. They sit next to each other, not touching. His computer is open to something about selkies. Eliot elects not to ask.

He holds his hands out in front of him, works through the exercises and stretches he’s to do every day. He did it all this morning already, but he can feel the low ache starting deep in his joints and has nothing else to do but talk to Quentin and that is––

It is easier to work from his fingers up to his shoulders and back down again than it is to figure out how to talk to Quentin. Claiming bravery is all well and good when faced with the ever-growing certainty death; it’s a much harder thing to act on it in the real world.

After, he sits with his chin propped on one hand, numbers on the stove fuzzing as his attention wanders. His eyes drift closed. The kitchen is dim, gentle, but the backs of his eyelids are gentler. Easier to talk to.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He hears the rustle of Quentin moving. Looking at him? Maybe.

“What for?”

“Fixing the clock.”

Quentin shifts again. The bleed of light from his laptop screen changes colors against his eyelids.

“You’re welcome,” he says quietly. “I hope I didn’t, um. Overstep.”

“You didn’t,” says Eliot, whose space is not his enough to bother about transgression. They have all been in and out of it, anyway, on the days when Eliot has been unable to get out of bed. Margo is the worst offender, a badge she wears with pride. Quentin he minds least.

They sit in the quiet until the beeping timer interrupts them, and Eliot pries himself up from his chair to check the cakes, set them back for another few minutes which he spends braced against the counter. Quentin taps at the computer in short bursts, and his eyes burn against Eliot’s back. Eliot sets his jaw and shoulders against it, tries to bear the looking.

It’s a relief when he can busy himself with the baking again. Action, something to do; the cakes turn out neatly to cool on the rack and it’s not until he’s set the pans to soak that he realizes he’s forgotten a key ingredient.

“Shit.”

Quentin’s head snaps up.

“What?” Concern threads through his voice, sharp and anxious. Eliot shakes his head.

“Icing.”

“Oh.” As quick as it arose, the concern bleeds away. “Well, we could get some?”

“At midnight?”

Quentin shrugs. “The place on the corner is open til two.”

And it’s so stupidly mundane, so immensely divorced from everything his life has been for the past few months, for the past few _ years _, running out at midnight on a weekday because he has no icing for his impulse baking, that there is no way he could possibly say no. They pull on shoes and jackets over pajamas and grab keys and wallets and walk the block to the bodega, where they pick up a can of processed chocolate frosting for a dollar fifty.

“If we were doing this right we’d use confectioners sugar,” Eliot gripes.

“It’s twelve a.m. El,” Quentin returns, half aside as he fishes change out of his pocket, and it’s blindingly normal and good. No worlds are ending, no disasters unfolding in their laps, no impossible quests handed to them. He is standing in a bodega just after midnight on a Wednesday night––Thursday morning––watching Quentin count out loose change in the broad palm of his hand, and then they will go home and put frosting on a cake and maybe eat it now, or maybe eat it later, and those are all good things, easy things, simple and real and all the more important for that.

It takes the two of them to finish icing the cake, Eliot’s wrists protesting as he attempts to get the sides. They make a mess of things, Quentin especially as Eliot points out the spots he’s missed, there, and oh wait there, and no there too, and when all’s said and done it is an ugly, imperfect cake, a little lumpy and a little patchy and finished. There’s frosting on the plate and the counter and their hands, and even Eliot’s nose where Quentin had come at him with a spatula, eyes crinkled in the most honest joy Eliot’s seen from him these past months, and Eliot swipes it away with one thumb as they survey their slightly lopsided masterpiece.

“Really, Coldwater?”

“Anyone ever told you you’re kinda bossy?” Quentin asks, shining.

Eliot sucks the frosting off his thumb. “See if I share any of my cake with you now.”

“Hey, I helped. I paid for this icing with my own money. I’ve got, like, shares.”

“What is this, an LLC?” Eliot asks, but that’s as far as he gets before Quentin starts laughing. Then Margo appears in the hallway, bitching about all the fucking noise when people are trying to sleep with Josh on her heels, and Eliot swallows his bubbling laughter long enough to offer them slices––

(“Yes, even you Q, I’m feeling magnanimous.”

“I _ will _ice you again, Waugh.”)

––and that wakes Kady too, and the whole strange group of them sits in the kitchen in their pajamas, enjoying his imperfect, ugly, fucking delicious cake.

* * *

> iii. biscuits

“What are you doing?”

“Baking,” Eliot returns, shooing Kady aside enough to open the drawer she’s blocking. She makes a face and takes her time swinging her legs out of the way. She’s the perfect picture of carelessness this morning, leaning back on one hand and holding a half-eaten apple in the other as she lounges on the counter. 

“No shit. Baking what?”

“Biscuits.”

“Like, breakfast biscuits?”

“Of the ‘and gravy’ variety,” he confirms, searching for the dough cutter. He could have sworn he saw it in here just the other day.

Kady takes a crunching bite of her apple. “Why?”

He finds it crowded in the back behind the immersion blender––this kitchen is like a Bon Appetit host’s wet dream and horribly organized––and slides the drawer closed. Kady immediately scoots back into place, expression far too challenging for this early in the morning. Eliot frowns at her.

But. He’s trying for bravery, and it’s easier to talk to Kady than the others, a comfortable first step. There’s nothing between them to cloud it all up, or if there is it’s been left behind with a hundred other now-petty grievances they don’t have the time or energy to unpack. Truly the prodding is nice, almost, or could be considered nice. Nice-adjacent. The pins-and-needles prickling of stretching a sleeping limb.

“To see if I can,” he answers. Her expression stutters a moment, then settles into something a little too understanding. She’s been funny like that, ever since Julia got back. He does her the courtesy of not wondering if that's related.

She surprises him by asking, “Want help?”

_ No, _ he almost says, automatic, but–– Well, he’s making an effort. Pins and needles.

“Maybe.”

Her expression crooks again, but she doesn’t make any move to leave as he collects ingredients and sets them next to the bowls and the measuring cups, all of it laid out meticulously so he will not have to go looking later, so he can plant himself in one place and not overstretch.

There is a difference, Lipson has told him firmly, between trying something new and pushing himself too far. He is trying to find the balance. It’s as unpleasant as it is good for him, probably.

The complication with biscuits––the challenge, as he sees it this early, sleepless morning––is the butter, which must be cold, so he must work fast. He keeps his grip light and steady, fingers curled, lets his body remember the movement of wrist and shoulder. The cubes come out uneven, but they do come out, and he puts them back in the fridge to keep chill as he moves on to the easier parts, the flour and the sugar and the salt.

And then he turns back to the fridge and his knee goes out from under him. He lands with a yelp.

“Shit,” says Kady, leaning forward over the counter. “You okay?”

“Yes,” he growls, hand stinging where he has caught his weight against his palm. His left knee is on fire, now, but it’s hardly the first time it’s decided to quit on him. He rolls over enough to push himself to sitting, back braced against the lower cabinets, and slowly, slowly eases it out, one wrapped around his calf and the other pressing down against the tight knot of pain caught beneath his kneecap. Useless fucking joint anyway. Kady’s hair swings into her face and she shoves it aside.

“Want a hand up?”

He should, probably, but standing again seems a monumental task, and he quails at the thought. That isn’t the point, anyway, standing. The point is to finish this, however imperfect it comes out. The point is proving he can do it. He holds a hand out.

“Can you pass me the bowl?”

“Seriously?”

He gives her his best kingly scowl. It does little in the face of her incredulity, but she hands the bowl down to him nevertheless.

“And the butter.”

She fetches it. Apparently she’d meant the offer of help. The realization settles somewhere behind his breastbone, strange but not unpleasant.

“So what’s with the whole baking thing anyway?” she asks when she has settled up on the counter again, watching from her bird’s eye view as he cuts the butter into the flour.

“Milk,” he says. She passes it down, waiting. He measures, pours, hands it back. “I get bored. Hand me an egg?”

“Yeah but you could do other stuff,” she says, handing him the whole carton. He cracks one, enjoys the stupid, too-big joy of being able to do it himself. Some days it grates that these little things feel like such milestones; this morning he’s only pleased. “Just saying.”

He shrugs, and regrets it when his shoulder twinges. “This is useful.”

“Is it?” She makes a face when he hands her the broken shell, but he is just as stubborn as she is, and she made the offer to assist. He waits while she leans over the side of the counter to drop it in the trash, cracking with a satisfying crunch. He holds out the carton in her direction.

“It’s useful to me.”

She takes her time accepting it from him. “To see if you can do it,” she surmises finally, expression unreadable. Eliot nods slowly, bowl braced in his lap as he stirs the sticky, messy dough.

“My body is a mess,” he says, arm working, feeling the dough come together. The usual bitterness is a muted thing today. Making his peace is an ongoing battle, but this morning it’s hard to stir up any true anger or unhappiness. Maybe it’s the early hour, or how long he has been awake, or the uncommon gentleness of the apartment in the soft light of the early morning, or the imperfect mess he’s making that will eventually come together into something good and worth the time and effort. He focuses on that. “I’m useless to Margo in Fillory, and I’m useless to Alice at the Library, and I’m useless to your Hedge crusade––”

“It’s not a _ crusade–– _”

He pushes on. “I can’t help Julia with whatever she’s doing and I clearly can’t help Q with anything.” Kady opens her mouth and Eliot forestalls her with a raised hand. “It’s alright. I’m not looking for pity points.”

She scowls. “I wasn’t going to give you any pity points.”

Which is fair. He wouldn't expect it from her anyhow. He shakes his head a little, dismissing the thought. “I’m trying to say, I can’t help with any of the big things. But I can do this.”

“Bake.”

“Mhm.” He runs the spatula around the edge of the bowl one final time. “Plus I’m a great cook.”

“You’re saying you’re helping us all with the restorative power of a home cooked meal?”

“Sure,” says Eliot. “Why not?”

Kady presses her lips together for a moment. Eliot flexes his wrist.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing you care, Waugh.”

“It’s part of my charm.”

She snorts. “Yeah right.” It sits for a moment, uncommonly still and light in the kindness of the morning. “So, do you need a hand up now, or––?”

He will have to eventually. He makes a face. "If you'd be so kind."

Between the two of them he manages to brace himself at the sink, weight entirely on his right leg, which he’ll regret this afternoon but for now he takes the opportunity to wash his hands and dry them and let Kady help him into one of the tall counter stools. She folds his arm and watches him flour the counter and tip the dough out. It’s a little on the wet side; the buttermilk is thicker than he’d expected. He adds extra flour.

“Want to give it a go?”

Her shoulders tense. “What?”

“Kneading it.”

“I–– Are you sure?”

“It’s very therapeutic. Good for anger management.”

He deserves the scowl she pins him with, probably, but his offer is honest enough beneath the ribbing. After a moment, her expression eases into curiosity, and her arms unfold.

“What do I do?”

“Well first you should probably wash your hands.” She gives him the finger.

But she washes her hands.

He coaches her through it, adding extra flour when the whole mess gets sticky and stringy, explaining the importance of keeping the dough cold and how butter forms the layers, and when it’s ready to roll out he pats it into a sheet and cuts biscuits with a cookie cutter, has Kady stick them in the oven and set a timer. She drums her fingers against the counter while he massages at his knee.

They come out a little on the flat side, but golden and nicely layered, and Kady looks not entirely unimpressed, which he will count as a win.

“We’ll make a chef of you yet,” he tells her, watching the steam rise in curling spirals as he pulls one open, feeling that familiar, easy satisfaction of making something. Using his body in a way to help instead of hinder, heal instead of hurt. Remembering himself step by step, minute by minute, inch by inch.

“Whatever,” she says, but there’s a matching glow of pride about her as the stirring members of the household trail into the kitchen, lured by the smell of food fresh-baked. Quentin wears a t-shirt a size and a half too big that must have once belonged to his father, and the realization sticks somewhere in Eliot’s gut, but Quentin only smiles at him, careful and delicate, and accepts the biscuit Julia holds out to him, the sleeve of her overlarge sweater smeared with jam.

“Wow,” says Josh, poking through the jelly options. “Kady, you made these? They smell great.”

“Eliot helped.”

“Well, I try.” He tosses it out light and easy, a familiar beat, but his heart isn’t in it. It’s busy watching Quentin eat breakfast with jam at the corner of his mouth, busy trying to say something with homemade breakfast foods that is too big to hold inside his fragile, slowly mending body.

One thing at a time, he tells himself. There will be time for all that. They will make themselves the time.

They eat breakfast.

* * *

> iv. pie

He follows his nose to the kitchen and finds Julia standing over a pan of half burnt apples, trying to salvage the un-blackened bits. He clears his throat to announce himself, and she startles.

“It was supposed to be pie filling,” she says in answer to his tilted eyebrow. “Quentin was talking about it and I–– wanted to try, I guess. Surprise him when he gets back from the Library.”

“And then you decided to set it on fire,” he surmises. She shrugs, distracted.

For a moment he means to ask her what’s on her mind, but the answer is clear and the question sticks in his throat. From the way her mouth twists she knows it too. One of the things he likes about Julia, which is still true even if she is nothing now but a human awkwardly fit in the skin of a goddess, or perhaps the other way around––and, is that nothing? there’s plenty to be said for goddesses and humans and the skin they fit in; as much as there is to say about monsters anyhow––is that she has an uncanny ability to see through bullshit.

But she doesn’t push. That’s kind of her.

His leg is a tight knot of discomfort today, ache deep in his knee and ankle and radiating up to his hip and sitting in the arch of his foot. In spite of that, he limps over to her and turns off the stove. A store bought pie crust sits on the counter, defrosting sadly under the fluorescent lights.

“Do it right, at least,” he says, haughty and only half meaning it, and she shoves at his arm but lets him scrape the sticky, oversweet, blackened mess out of the frying pan and into the trash.

“I can do it myself,” she informs him, no real heat behind it.

“I know.” There is, he’s sure, nothing in the known or unknown universe she could not accomplish if she set her mind to it. But that doesn’t mean she has to do it on her own. “I hear asking for help is healthy, though.”

“Said the pot to the kettle.”

“Baby steps,” he replies, because he is trying in this crooked, indirect way of his, and sets the pan in the sink to soak. Julia watches him move around the kitchen with practiced ease, pulling out flour salt sugar, leaving a bowl of ice water to chill in the freezer.

“Can you cube two sticks of butter?”

“Are you press-ganging me into this?”

“You can do better than burnt apples in that processed store-bought atrocity.” He hands her a knife, hilt first, and sweeps the frozen crust back into the freezer where hopefully it will languish for eternity. Julia shakes her head at him and gets a cutting board.

“So what kind of pie are we making?”

“A good one.”

“You’re not funny.”

He’s pretty sure he’s at least a little funny, but he doesn’t push her on it. “Peach. Q’s favorite.”

“Is it?”

“You’re his best friend. I thought you were supposed to know.”

She shrugs. “Honestly he’s never really liked pie. I was surprised when he brought it up.”

“He likes peach pie,” he says. She looks at him for a moment, then turns to the fridge to get the butter.

“Your peach pie, maybe.”

Eliot measures out flour with hands that only shake a little. Flexes his twinging ankle. Holds his silence. He’s not sure what he would say anyway. Julia’s hair obscures her expression as she cubes the butter.

“You know,” she tells him narrowly, “you’ll have to talk to him eventually.”

“I talk to him,” Eliot protests, which is not untrue. They speak as much as anyone else in this overlarge, awkward apartment, and it’s exactly like it’s always been, except that nothing is like it has ever been. He does his best to ignore that, even though it’s like not thinking of elephants; he can’t seem to avoid it. Which is part of the problem, maybe, but it is not all as bad as Julia’s tone of voice makes it out to be. Sometimes it’s good, even; sometimes they bake a cake so late at night it is almost tomorrow, and sometimes Eliot is more himself than not, and that’s progress, isn’t it? Even if the talking is all surface-level, reprising familiar roles they’ve outgrown now that their selves don’t fit their skins.

Julia would know about that too, the not-fitting. But he is trying, one step at a time, assembling the recipe for improvement. Making something where there was nothing before. Remembering all the messy, imperfect, important parts of living a life outside your own head. Healing.

It’s just–– taking a little longer to work it all out with Quentin, is all. But he’s _ trying. _

“Sure,” says Julia, in a way that isn’t sure at all. “And the acts of service thing is a low-stakes avoidance tactic.”

“Well what do you suggest,” he snaps, peeved, and spills the sugar for his trouble. Better that than the salt, at least.

Her knife sinks into the cutting board with a resounding thump.

“I don’t know,” she bites out, and then takes a heavy breath. Quieter, she adds, “He won’t talk to me either. It’s like we’re just...”

“Going through the motions?”

Her head tilts up. She looks tired. “Yeah.”

He adds the sugar, salt. Combines slowly. Julia goes back to the butter.

“I think he’d listen to you,” she says after a moment. He watches her sidelong as she measures out even chunks, scrapes them off the side of her knife as they start to stick. He sighs.

“I don’t know why he would.”

“You didn’t see him when you were–– Y’know.”

No. He didn’t. That’s true. Eliot swallows. “I’m pretty sure I broke his heart, Julia.”

“Maybe you should do something about it, then.”

Ah, Julia Wicker. No power in the universe more stubborn. His chest goes tight a moment.

“You’re probably right,” he agrees, heavier than he means it to be, and empties the dry mix into the blender. “Add the butter. No, half, just–– There.”

He sets the lid on, pulses it a few times, tosses in the rest and works it until it’s the graham cracker consistency he’s looking for. Julia watches.

“How do you know when it’s ready?”

He crumbles some of the dough between his fingers. “Practice.” It’s really so much easier with the blender than it ever had been in Fillory. God bless modern amenities. “Bring me the ice water?”

She brings it over braced between her two hands, measures out tablespoons as he blends, checking the consistency every so often.

“Here,” he says when it’s done, pinching it together so it sticks. “See? Just enough to hold.”

“There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Don’t.”

She smiles. Strained, but a smile. “Have it your way. What now?”

“The fun part.”

Julia kneads the dough while he stretches his leg across the stools, talking her through it, and when it holds together the way it’s meant to they stick it in the fridge to chill.

“It has to sit,” he explains, accepting the wet dishcloth she passes him to clean the counter. She washes her hands at the sink.

“How long?”

“A few hours.”

“The store-bought would have been faster.”

“I’m pretending you didn’t say that.”

“Are you this pretentious about everything?”

“Cooking is an art,” he informs her, and scrapes together a smile that feels only a little strained when she wrinkles her nose at him. She loops around the island to sit at the empty stool at his side, and for a moment they rest in an easy silence. Eliot rubs at his thigh and flexes his ankle.

“Are you alright?” he asks into the quiet. She leans forwards a little ways, forearms braced against the granite.

“I don’t think so,” she says, more candid than he expects. He looks her way and is met with one of her wry, black little smiles. “I mean, it’s getting better but it’s still… I really thought law school was going to be the worst thing I had to deal with at twenty-six. Maybe getting married, if things worked out. Not–– all this.”

“Didn’t factor being repeatedly fucked by magic into your five year plan?”

“My mistake.”

Eliot hums and nods, listing gently with the motion when she bumps her shoulder against him. He can’t imagine any of them are where they thought they’d be five years ago. Maybe Kady, still in deep with the Hedges, but Marina’s seat at the table never would have opened up if not for the Beast, if not for Jane Chatwin’s meddling. Everyone else playing the system and the oddball bunch of them left facing the fallout. Trying to make their lives work when the world seems intent on screwing them over at every turn. Or maybe they’re the only ones stupid enough to care about it.

“I don’t know where to start,” she says quietly. Eliot looks at her, watches her shrug, and she looks just like Quentin as she does it. He forgets, sometimes, how long they’ve known each other. How intertwined they are. “I mean, what now?”

He doesn’t know, is the simple answer. There’s too much to pick apart, and he’s leery of delving into it on the best of days, which are few and far between even if he’s getting better, slowly, minute by minute, inch by inch. And he has tried throwing himself into new problems and he has tried stepping up and it has left him cast out of the kingdom he loves and distant from the man he spent a lifetime with and out of place in his own body half the time, and doesn’t know what to do in the face of all that uncertainty.

But he can help Julia Wicker bake a fucking pie, and that’s not nothing.

“We need peaches,” says Eliot. “Up for a trip?”

They catch the train to the nearest Trader Joe’s, make an excursion of it. Eliot picks up the ice cream Margo likes, and Julia remembers coffee and eggs and milk, and they spend too long trying to one-up each other finding the weirdest items, which ends when Julia puts a jar of bacon jam in the basket.

“What are you supposed to put that on?” Eliot asks.

“Everything,” she shrugs. “It’s bacon.”

And the peaches last of all: a half dozen of them, fresh and soft and smelling like home in a way that makes his chest go tight and throat burn. Julia watches him too closely as he picks them out, and is oddly quiet about it when they pay. She takes the bags without prompting, and he limps out after her, heart loud in his narrow chest. They wait for the train in silence, echoing rattle of the station clouding out any conversation that might be had. She stands with the bags while he sits, leg protesting the trip, the swaying of the train, the heat of the day. He ignores it as best he can, and when he can’t lets it remind him that he’s here, real, himself mostly. It’s a paltry comfort.

“It’s from Fillory,” she says finally, between the station and the apartment, midday sun hot on their shoulders. “Peaches and plums. Like you said in the park.”

Eliot hums an affirmative. “Did he tell you about it?”

“Only a little.” Eliot fishes for the key to the building and then keys them through the wards. “He said he grew old and died. You both did.” She hesitates. “He said you had a family.”

“Yeah.” That’s all there is to say about it, really. Even the heartbreak came later.

The elevator doors pull back. Fifty unlived years sit heavy on his shoulders and he feels each and every one, closer to a hundred and seven than twenty-seven. He opens the front door to the penthouse, finds it too big and empty as ever. The afternoon sunlight cuts thick bars across the floor, dust drifting. Has it ever been home to any of them, he wonders, or just another place to shelter while the world ends?

He misses the cottage. He misses Quentin. He misses home. Even his body feels only halfway his.

"I could really fuck it up," he says quietly. Julia, shucking her shoes, looks at him.

"What?"

"Q. I could–– I don't want to make it worse."

Julia frowns, and it feels a little like being stripped bare; he feels raw beneath her gaze. He makes himself hold it. Remembers kingliness, remembers fifty years, remembers home. Her expression softens. “He misses you, you know.”

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath and looks at her. Beautiful Julia Wicker, half goddess even without an ounce of divinity. He laughs, humorless and watery, admits, “I don’t know where to start.”

And Julia, who gets it, says, “Well, you can start by helping me make an apology pie.”

He takes a breath, sets his shoulders. Smiles for Julia as best he can, a little awkward but real.

“And here I thought it was my apology pie.”

She shakes her head, pushing forward into the kitchen and dropping the bags on the counter, shuffling the groceries away. “Definitely not,” she says while Eliot toes off his shoes and trails after her, limping still. “This is my project. You’re the sidekick.”

“You’re so lucky I’m around to help. To think you could be poisoning him with whatever that was.”

“Yeah, alright. C’mon, what do we do with all these?” She holds up the bag of peaches.

They boil them and shock them, peel and slice them. Eliot tosses them with a little cinnamon, sugar and brown sugar and starch, just enough to thicken the filling. Julia pulls the crust from the fridge and rolls it out, carefully shifting it into the waiting tin, and they cut strips from the leftover pastry for the lattice overtop and set it in the oven to bake.

While they wait, Julia pops opens the bacon jam. It’s not _ as _ bad as he expects. He sort of wants to give it to Josh and see what comes of it. Given Hoberman’s thrill of a challenge, probably something decent.

“I think it’s sweet, you know,” she says suddenly, dragging him from his thoughts. He blinks at her.

“Hm?”

“The baking thing.”

“Sweet?”

She shrugs. “I mean, it’s about helping out, right? Doing something when it feels kind of like there’s nothing you can do?”

He expects it to feel raw, the open acknowledgement. Not because he hasn’t put it out there before, to Kady and to Margo too, years and years ago the first time she found him in the kitchen in the aftermath of a party making petit fours. But Julia has something sharp to her, and he waits for the impulse to flinch again under her gaze.

It doesn’t come. He feels warm about it, oddly light.

“Yeah,” he says. “Pretty much.”

“You should still talk to Q.”

He laughs despite himself, lightness spilling out. “You are incredibly stubborn.”

“Yeah. You know, this friend of mine once told me he’s never met anyone less willing to take no for an answer.”

Eliot grins at that to match the quirking amusement in her voice. It’s good to see some of her exhaustion bleed away with the easy effort of making, with the understanding. He gets why Quentin loves her so much, clever fierce stubborn Julia Wicker. He kind of loves her too.

The pie comes out of the oven beautifully golden and crisp and smelling of home, and Julia does, eventually, agree that the homemade crust is worth the effort. It’s an exertion of will not to dig into it immediately, but they do their best, for Quentin’s sake. They make themselves at home on the couch instead, Julia buried in her newest project––something for Kady and the Hedges, if he understands correctly––while he props his leg up and dozes, warm in the afternoon sun.

Quentin and Alice return in the early strokes of the evening, light pooling through the windows the same rosy gold as the pie. The sound of the key in the lock stirs Eliot, and he sits up in time to see Quentin cross the threshold, freezing with his hand outstretched to drop his keys in the little bowl they keep by the door. His eyes go wide as he smells the pie, and then a little wet, and Eliot knows he remembering their home in that same gutpunch familiar way, fifty years clouding the air.

“Oh,” he says tightly. His eyes finds Eliot. “You baked.”

_ Yes, for you, _ he thinks, and he says, gently, “Julia baked.”

Julia, buried in research, waves vaguely in his direction, mouth set in a frown that only Eliot can see.

“It’s for you,” she says for him. “Eliot helped.”

Quentin stays rooted in the doorway as Alice strides past him into the kitchen, unpacking her bag. He blinks. “You made a pie for me?”

Julia closes the laptop and looks up. “You were talking about how much you missed it,” she says, a little awkward now. Quentin looks frayed and unspooling around the edges. “I thought it would be nice.”

“You’re next, Alice,” Eliot says, something to break the tension, to pull his mind away from the way Quentin looks like one blow might shatter him. It won’t; Quentin is the strongest person he knows, besides Bambi. But it’s still hard to look. Harder to talk about. Levity helps mask the guilt.

Alice, for her part, leaves off with the bag for long enough to fold her arms in his direction, narrow gaze ruined by the way her mouth makes a thin-pressed line where she’s trying not to smile.

“I don’t even like pie.”

“Really? Not a single one?”

“You haven’t tried Eliot’s pie,” Quentin says, sounding more solid. Eliot chances another glance, feels himself steady as Quentin remembers himself, drops his keys and enters more fully into the apartment.

“Hey,” protests Julia.

“Sorry, Jules, it’s true.”

“I work all day and this is the thanks I get.”

“You have other fine qualities.”

“Like what?”

“Is this... bacon jam?” Alice interrupts, and everyone looks to her and the jar she’s holding.

“Yes,” Eliot says. “You should try it. I have to say––not the weirdest meat I’ve had in my mouth.”

“What was?” Julia asks, knowing, and Eliot grins. He loves her, he really does.

“So!” yelps Quentin before he can get started, and both Eliot and Julia break into laughter, and even Alice is smiling. Quentin’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Pie?”

* * *

> v. cookies

It isn’t that he needs the help, of course. Not like he had then, when a few broken eggs shattered his patience and his mood. He’s a little more practiced, now, at knowing his body and its limits, even the new ones, even the infuriating ones. It’s better, anyhow; his hands work and his knees work and his skin fits him right more often than it doesn’t, and he feels as much himself as he feared he never would.

He knocks on Quentin’s door.

“Hang on, one sec,” Q says, muffled, and there’s a clattering and a mumbled curse and the sound of something falling down, and Quentin opens the door. “Oh. Eliot. Hi.”

“Hi.” He’s got a smear of ink across one cheek that seems to be a note on… something Greek; he can’t make out the letters. His hair is lank and limp, and the circles beneath his eyes are pronounced, and he looks nearly as ragged as he did when they first brought Eliot home, like he’s stuck in that moment still, somehow, while the rest of them push on. Eliot feels a sweeping guilt and forces himself to let it go. He has been a ruin of uncertainty and fear; he is making it right now.

He says, “I’m making cookies.”

“Uh.”

“I said I would.”

“Right,” he agrees. “I remember.”

Eliot takes a breath. “Do you want to help?”

Quentin stares at him a moment, looking confused, maybe, or curious. He wets his lips. “Alright.”

They’re not difficult, cookies. Dump everything a bowl and stir; there’s not much by way of timing or delicacy to them. Two people is too many––cooks in the kitchen, and all that––so Eliot measures while Quentin mixes, rolling up his sleeves to avoid the flour sifting out of the bowl.

“Did you really tell Julia you missed pie?” he asks, something to fill the space. Quentin scrapes the edge of the bowl in the sort of way that suggests he’s done this before. Eliot can’t place why it’s familiar until he suddenly can: the dream-hazy memory of Quentin in the cottage, bowl in one arm, pretending patience while Eliot shows him how to run the spatula around the rim; _ if you’re going to do it, do it right. _

The world tips sideways and snaps back into place again. Eliot drips vanilla on the counter before he remembers himself.

“––wasn’t a lie,” Quentin is saying. “I keep thinking about home. I mean, in general, not just––” He raises a hand halfway to scrub at his face and then realizes he’s got flour on it and drops it again, rueful. “I didn’t think she’d actually do it.”

“When has Wicker ever turned down a challenge?”

He laughs, strained. “Yeah, okay, fair.”

“And, anyway,” Eliot starts, and braces himself, “she worries.”

Quentin sighs, scraping around the edge of the bowl one last time before Eliot starts adding the dry ingredients into the mix. “She doesn’t need to. I think she just... feels bad.”

“About what?”

“Y’know. Dad. The goddess stuff. Fillory.” He leaves out mention of the monster, and Eliot presses down around the sharp edges of a comment. “I think she wants me to pick something new to like, do, I guess.”

He adds more of the flour, watches Quentin’s forearms work as he mixes. “You don’t think maybe she just wants to make sure you’re doing okay?”

“I mean, all things considered I’m pretty sure I’m doing great.”

“Q.”

He pauses, looks up at Eliot. The question across his face catches, then resolves into understanding.

“Are you–– Is this a check in?” 

Honesty, he reminds himself. If he’s going to fuck this up, he’ll do it openly, on his own terms. “Yes.” 

“You’re checking in with me.” 

“That was the idea.” He crooks an eyebrow. “How am I doing?” 

“I–– Why?”

The veneer of levity fades away under Q’s frown. Eliot sets the bowl down, tries to file his thoughts into order. Why? Because he hasn’t yet, and he should. Because baking is good and isn’t nearly enough. Because he’s himself again more often than not; because he’s healing minute by minute, inch by inch, filling out to fit his own body again, and can make the space for someone else now. Because he cares more than he can say.

“I know things have been hard, Q. We’ve all been busy and figuring our shit out and you haven’t exactly been…” He tries to find a good way to put it and falters, mind overclouded with things he doesn’t know how to put into words, and in the silence Quentin’s expression goes hard, a little mean. Prickling.

“What? Alright?” He snorts, derisive. “Because we’re all doing so well, you mean.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Quentin huffs, fork stuck in the middle of his mixing bowl and turns to face him more fully. “What did you mean, El?”

He doesn’t sound angry. Just tired. Eliot swallows.

“We all went through some shit,” he says carefully. “And I’m sorry for my part in it, I really am. But I’m trying to, I don’t know, move forward. Get better.”

“And I’m not.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Sounds kind of like it is.”

Eliot takes a breath. “Alright. I’m sorry. I’m not–– It’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m trying to say I’m worried.”

“I’m handling it, El. I know how to ask for help.”

“But you haven’t.”

“Because I’m _ handing _ it. After everything, everyone else––”

“It’s not about _everyone_ _else,_ Q––”

“I’m trying, okay? I’m doing my goddamn best, Eliot.” He takes a deep breath, voice tight, shoulders tight, everything wound up like a spring, ready to snap. Eliot nearly flinches, and bright anger blooms somewhere in his gut, anger that feels a great deal like regret. “Things were fucking awful and you _ weren’t here _ and you don’t get to come telling me I’m not doing a good enough job of, of checking in when I am trying as hard as I fucking can to keep everyone from falling apart!”

His hand smacks down against the counter. “You shouldn’t have to!”

It rings through the kitchen. Quentin stares at him, eyes wide, hands half raised, flinching, and he feels suddenly awful. Nauseated. His eyes find something else to fix on, the blinking of the water dispenser, the sheen of the light against the refrigerator door.

“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I just––” He breathes a curse. It’s so _ hard _ . He knew he was going to fuck this up. “You shouldn’t have to keep everyone together. Q.” His hands open and close around nothing. Quentin is still staring at him, wide and open and braced for something. Eliot doesn’t know how to reach him, how to push through that. How to _ fix _ it. Quentin has always been better at mending things; Eliot has only ever known how to break them. “It’s not–– You get to be okay too. I want to help.” _ I want to help you the way you help me. _ It sticks in his throat. He swallows. “Please let me help.”

“You do,” Quentin says softly, finally. Eliot presses his palms flat to the counter, stares down at the half-mixed dough. His jaw works.

“Pretending things are okay isn’t the same as helping.”

“It’s kind of nice to pretend, though.”

“Yeah,” Eliot agrees. He kind of, sort of, inexplicably wants to cry. “It is.”

Quentin makes himself busy with the baking, slowly folding up the flour, sealing the sugar, closing the carton of eggs. Eliot watches his hands as they flit from task to task, here dusting at some of the sugar, here stacking the measuring cups into a neat pile, here wiping at the vanilla smeared across the counter. He waits. He couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. Doesn’t know where to start.

“You came back and you were––” says Quentin quietly, and Eliot’s watching his hands. Sturdy hands, broad with blunt nails and hair at his wrists, which Eliot’s always liked. He touches the edge of the bowl, the fork stuck in the dough, the spot of brown sugar pressed into the web of skin between thumb and forefinger. Rubs it away. “You were so–– broken, El. I couldn’t put anything else on you. It was easier to keep busy. I didn’t have to think too hard.”

“I would have taken it,” Eliot tells him, aching; it hurts to say and it hurts to take so long to have said, even if he needed the time, even if they have it. He makes himself look away from Quentin’s hands, makes him look at his face. He’s so beautiful. He watched that face grow old and lined and has never known anything more beautiful. “Q, I’d carry it for you.”

Quentin smiles, lips twisting without humor. He looks tired. He always looks tired. Eliot wants give him somewhere safe to rest. “You didn’t say anything.”

His laughter comes out brittle. “I don’t think anyone’s ever listed communication as one of my finer qualities.” But that isn’t fair, not to Q. He wets his lips and tries again. “I didn’t know how.”

“I’m just me, Eliot.”

“I know. It’s terrifying.”

That pulls a laugh from him, rough and low but a laugh nevertheless. One of his hands touches the back of Eliot’s wrist, fingers warm and sure. His heart misses a beat and lurches forward in double time to catch up.

“I’m really sorry, Q,” he says.

“I know.”

“I want to help.”

“I know.”

He wets his lips. “I love you.”

Quentin’s hand wraps around his wrist, fingers pressed to his leaping pulse.

“I know.”

He goes readily when Quentin tugs him closer, desperate almost, burying his face in his hair. It smells like him, like his shampoo and the warm-soft Quentin scent underneath. He breathes in deep as Quentin’s arms wrap around him, hold him too tight, bruising. Eliot doesn’t mind; he brings one hand up to smooth across his back, shirt wrinkling under his open palm, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, the tremor of his shoulders.

“I missed you,” he says, muffled into Eliot’s shirt. “I missed you so fucking much.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot says to the top of his head, wraps him tighter, takes the weight of him as he pushes further forward like he could burrow into Eliot’s waiting arms. Eliot doesn’t want to let go; he’d stay like this forever if he could. Forget the rest of the world, forget his aches and pains; he would stay here with Quentin in his arms for the rest of goddamn time. He cradles the back of his head, scrapes his fingers through his short hair as Q goes boneless. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Quentin just clings to him. Eliot bows his head, murmurs a string of nothing against the delicate shell of his ear, the soft hair of his temple. The cookie dough sits on the counter for a good long while. Neither notices. Neither cares.

It’s Q who moves first, arms loosening enough that he can tip his head back and sigh, a whole-body affair that rolls through him. He props his chin against Eliot’s chest.

“Everything’s so fucking hard,” he says. Eliot presses a kiss to the crown of his head and doesn’t let him go.

“Yeah.”

“I just–– I’m afraid that if I think about it too much I’ll just fall apart and be useless, and who’s gonna–– I mean. How could I do that to everyone else? After everything?”

“You’re allowed,” Eliot tells him. “It’s okay to need help. I know it’s hard, trust me, I’m _ well _ aware, but Q–– You deserve it just as much as everyone else.”

“I know,” he says, and ducks his head forward again. “I know it in my head, it’s just. Hard to believe it.”

“Let me help.” _ Let me take care of you. _

His laugh gets lost in Eliot’s shoulder. “That could be a lot of work, El.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you.”

He takes a deep breath. Eliot runs his fingers along the back of his neck, the soft skin, the feather-light hair. Surely his broken body cannot be so bad if it can hold Q like this, with a hand on the back of his neck and another around the breadth of his shoulders. It’s good, actually, good because it can be a home, sort of, the way people can be home more than places. Good because it carries the cottage somewhere deep in its bones, and a long life full of love, and fifty years of instinct, instinct telling him that it is enough right now to stand here and hold Quentin, to stand here and love him.

So Eliot holds him and loves him and waits.

“Okay,” Q mumbles eventually. Eliot breathes.

“Okay,” he agrees, and kisses the top of his head. “Okay,” he says, and he means _ I love you._

Quentin sighs, violent, trembling. “I don’t know where to start.”

But Eliot has a philosophy about that. “Do you want to finish the cookies?”

“Yeah.”

So they finish the cookies, which run a little too much in the oven for the neglect, but it doesn’t matter. They sit pressed shoulder to shoulder at the counter, caught up in each other's space, eating them piping hot and buttery. Quentin soaks his in milk and looks a little less grey in the face, a little less helpless.

Eliot says, “I can’t believe you Han Solo’d me.”

“Sorry,” says Q, and he dimples. “It was right there, though.”

“You know I mean it, right?”

Q looks at him, face wide open, every emotion bare across it. There’s a smear of chocolate on his chin. “Yeah,” he says, shining soft. “Of course.”

It feels like being handed something immense and delicate, and it feels like nothing has changed at all. Eliot’s heart expands in his chest. Like he’s looked away and found himself filled out again, found he is himself. He watches Quentin eat and thinks, _ We can be okay, we can help each other be okay again. _

“Okay,” he says. “Good.”

It is.

**Author's Note:**

> the recipes, for anyone who might be interested:
> 
> i. [peasant loaf](https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/post/150472721391/i-was-at-our-local-bakery-recently-and-came-across) (if you want to add rosemary I'd suggest about a tablespoon, which you can add pretty much whenever you want)  
ii. [cake](https://fuckingrecipes.tumblr.com/post/135895956938/coming-from-a-state-champion-baker)  
iii. [biscuits](https://www.momontimeout.com/perfect-biscuits-every-time-recipe/)  
iv. [pie crust](https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/) (the filling is from The Chef Show and I don't have the recipe)  
v. [cookies](https://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/18476/original-nestle-toll-house-chocolate-chip-cookies/)
> 
> trader joe's [uncured bacon jam](http://www.whatsgoodattraderjoes.com/2016/04/trader-joes-uncured-bacon-jam.html) is a real (though, unfortunately(?), discontinued) thing

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [a simple, firm fold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22131142) by [rainny_days](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainny_days/pseuds/rainny_days)


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